


How Do You Soften

by silverspoonedbeanies



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: AU - only slightly because of the 3x10 spoiler, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Other, Post 3x09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 17:12:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3075170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverspoonedbeanies/pseuds/silverspoonedbeanies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Felicity walks down into the foundry early one morning she finds one person there who she never imagined she would see, and that was saying a lot due to the week she was having.</p><p>“Felicity what are we going to do? I just- I can’t stomach the thought of burying him again. And this time, I don’t think we’re going to get another chance.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do You Soften

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this a week before 3x09 aired and abandoned it after the episode (as I fell into deep, deep denial), but after watching the New Zealand Promo I felt inspired once more. There has always been a lack of Thea and Felicity interacting and I needed to see them react to his death, together. Hope there is more point to this than just crying, Happy New Year!

“Felicity? Right?”

Crap Thea had heard her; she turned around to the one person that was not supposed to be in the foundry.

“Thea? What are you doing here?” Felicity attempted to sound a little clueless, she knew lying was not her strongsuit. Thea was slowly walking around the maze of computer cords behind Felicity’s desk, tapping her fingers along the metallic workbench. Her eyes hadn’t looked towards Felicity since she made her presence aware. Something, Felicity was beginning to think, that was a Queen trait. Or was it a Merlyn? She was never close enough to either of the Merlyn’s to know.

“It is my club.”

“But that’s upstairs and down here is- supposed to be storage. And you are probably wondering why it’s not? And why I am in your said club,” Felicity tapped her phone on to check the time, “at 6 am on a Tuesday, huh?” Her toe began to tap against the cement floors, leaving a faint echo.

See Oliver had the questions he didn’t like to answer like “Where? When? How? Who?” but most of the time he would come up with half-assed attempts to distort his lie into a truth. Felicity could come up with a lie, but she also knew she was worse than Oliver when it came to sounding in the least bit believable (she guessed it was Oliver’s charm that helped him.) To add to the odds against her, Thea could easily pick up on a lie a mile away; the girl had been through too much.

“You worked for Oliver, right?”

“I used to work for your brother, back when we had Queen Consolidated, or Palmer Industries? However you spin it. I was trying to get it back for him but- I mean I still am, it’s just,” Felicity had only known for three days now and whether or not Malcolm had told Thea was, well it hadn’t been on her list of things to think about. Felicity still was clinging to the hope that this was another hiccup in his life, in their journey together. She took a deep breath to level out her emotions, knowing if she were to start talking her voice would be shaky and broken.

“I know, Felicity. I know he’s dead.”

Felicity looked over to Thea whose eyes were already brimming with tears. So Malcolm must have told her, but how he told her is what worried Felicity.  She felt her body start to shake at just Thea’s words, at Malcolm’s word, at the thought that she still begged to be false. All of this was more than anything she could process.  

“Malcolm told you?” she asked even though it was more confirmation than not.

“Yeah. He told me a couple days ago, I didn’t know who to go to…besides how was anyone supposed to know? What was I supposed to tell people? I mean I thought,” Thea’s voice broke, “I thought I was the only who cared about him. I didn’t know who to go to…” That was when the dam burst and Thea’s face was soaked with tears in seconds, and so was Felicity’s. Felicity’s heart ached for her. This girl in front of her, this woman, had experienced so much pain and suffering and she has no one to go to. Thea hunched forward hand pressed to her chest, as if she was trying to hold together the crumbling emotions she felt. Felicity knew that feeling because she had been in bed the last three days in attempt to feel whole, but there was a space on the side of her bed that would always be vacant. Forever vacant of his warm body, of his love, of his touch; and seeing that Thea was having just as an issue holding it together as she had been made her feel not as lonely.  

She didn’t even realize she had walked towards Thea until her arms were wrapped around her and they were both sobbing into one another. And then the next second they were sitting on the floor still holding onto one another as they cried.

When Felicity had first been told, she didn’t want sympathy, she didn’t want to be held or cared after; she just wanted him. She wanted to remember him. Letting someone else touch her as she tried to process her world falling apart, was something she did not want. Now she sat on the floor of the empty foundry, with someone who Oliver loved just as much as her.

Felicity had calmed down, slowing her breathing, while Thea’s chest still shook.

Did Thea have her mother to grieve with when Oliver had died the first time? Or was Moira too caught up in the grieving of her husband and son to notice Thea’s pain? Thea didn’t seem to have close friends from what Felicity had seen, no one that she would be able to grieve with. It reminded Felicity of when she heard Cooper had died; her was mother nowhere near her to care, and no friends to lean on. But she knew that this was worse for both of them.

After a while Thea slowly became quiet, her tears still falling from what Felicity’s wet shirt could tell, she still held onto Felicity. Sniffling Thea started, “did Malcolm tell you too? Or did you just know?”

“No he came down here to tell me.” Felicity didn’t want to think about those seconds of hope, thinking it was Oliver, but instead Malcolm with those swords and the news that Oliver would never walk back down to the foundry.

“He was gone for a day. I didn’t hear from him at all, I thought he was just off doing something, but then he showed up at the loft. Well I walked in and he was just standing there. Looking at the Christmas tree,” she started to choke up again. “And then he just said it like it was nothing. Like he didn’t think I cared about Oliver at all, like he wasn’t my father telling me that my brother was dead. He doesn’t care that my brother’s dead.”

And then they were crying again.

“Felicity he can’t be gone! Oliver can’t be dead, it’s not fair…for us!” Thea got out through her stagnant sobs. They calmed down again with only slow tears falling from Felicity’s eyes, Thea pulled away from Felicity. Grabbing hold of her hands, “can you tell me about him? As the Arrow, I know what he was like as like, Oliver.”

Thea cracked a sad smile that Felicity wanted to mirror but was struggling to find that emotion, “Thea, he was a hero and that’s all that should matter now.” Felicity got quiet towards the end of her answer, knowing that tears were just around the corner for these two.

“I should have known,” Thea shook her head, “at least I should have figured it out sooner, it all makes so much sense now. I was probably too caught up in Malcolm’s lies to see the truth staring right at me. I mean, Oliver and Roy being best friends? That sounds so suspicious, how could I not realize Oliver was the Arrow?”

“You had a lot on your plate Thea, so don’t blame yourself for not realizing it, it wasn’t the right time and God knows what would have happened if you had found out before. No reason to be rude, us sitting on the floor crying and all, but you don’t handle being lied to very easily,” Felicity gave her best attempt at a smile.  

“Felicity Smoak you are right on that.”

“But Thea, just know that- Oliver,” her voice quivered, “he was doing this to keep you safe. That was one of the last things he said to me, that he wanted you to be okay.”

Thea shook her head in confirmation; Felicity knew this was too much for her to process, even now.

They stayed quiet like that for a few minutes. A very comfortable silence, as the water slowly dripped into the foundry from the rain that morning, and then steam hissed here and there. Along with the slow and steady hum coming from the lights that lined his suit case, waiting to be worn again.

“I wish we had been able to meet when he was still around, he talked about you all the time. Even though Mom used to roll her eyes when he would go on and on about you, Walter did too…”

“Please tell me he didn’t say anything embarrassing about me,” Felicity worried about all the things he might have told the Queens over dinner.

“Don’t worry they were all good. In fact on the way back from Corto Maltese he went on and on about all the things you two had done the past few months,” she gripped on to Felicity’s hands as she noticed the tears start in Felicity’s eyes.

“Did he tell you about our date? And how it went, well, up in flames…or maybe he didn’t because that was more Arrow than Oliver and he probably couldn’t risk you thinking anything weird.”

“No he didn’t, so you’ll have to fill me in one day. Did you guys ever- were you guys ever together?”

Felicity took a deep breath.

That was the hardest question that she continued to be reminded of; they weren’t anything, but they were everything.

“No. He didn’t think it was a very good idea, and I didn’t think- I thought we would have more time…”

“Well if I could see anything from just our conversation on the plane, he was in love with you. And I had seen him with Laurel, so that’s saying something. He loved Laurel, but the way his eyes sparkled when he told me about how you two were working on getting Queen Consolidated back…it was like all those tacky movies where the guy becomes a lovesick puppy,” it seemed like Thea was going to go on but she started crying again. “I miss him so much already.”

“I never told him how I felt, and I think that’s one thing I won’t ever be able to forgive myself for Thea, he told me so many times, in so many ways. It was always there on the tip of my tongue too but I just never could, and now he’s gone.”

Thea reached over to hug Felicity again as they both let into their grief.

“I wonder what Oliver would say if he saw us right now?” Thea tried to laugh.

“Somewhere he’s probably laughing at us, Thea.”

“I never had anyone that I felt who knew me the best, that I could literally sit on a gross old floor of the basement of Verdant and cry. But then again I never thought I would have to say goodbye to him like this.”

Nodding to Thea, they got up off the ground and straightened off their skirts. Thea attempted to fix her running mascara, while Felicity looked to see the time.

“Felicity what are we going to do? I just- I can’t stomach the thought of burying him again. And this time, I don’t think we’re going to get another chance.”

Felicity felt something stir in her chest, the same feeling she felt after everyone told her he was gone, like there was another chance.

“Me neither Thea, so let’s not think about it.”

“I’m gonna head back upstairs and try and work before Roy gets in but if I show up at your door later, will you please answer?”

“Anything that makes you a bit more okay, I’ll do it.”

“I know he wanted to keep me safe Felicity,” Thea turned back to Felicity after making it over to the stairs, “but I want to help somehow, now more than ever. I can’t let Malcolm get away with this, not after everything he tried to promise me.”

“I get it Thea. Also, Roy would probably be up for talking since you know everything now. He could help you, and just don’t wait too long about it.”

Thea responded to Felicity in a simple nod before she went to head back up to Verdant. A little voice spoke in Felicity’s head that this is exactly what she needed, and that little voice sounded a lot like Oliver.


End file.
